


you don't look happy (but you do look good)

by mdizzee



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Drug Use, Extremely Slow Burn, F/F, Heavy Angst, I am going to put these girls through the mill, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, The Unsinkable Eight (The Wilds)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29499393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdizzee/pseuds/mdizzee
Summary: Toni just wants a peaceful summer, and Shelby just needs something to fill the silence. (And everybody swears they're totally fine. Really.)It's about love, greed, and tragedy, on a lonely Texas ranch.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe, but in the background
Comments: 61
Kudos: 227





	1. bear suit

**Author's Note:**

> the cowboy ranchin', mega trainwreck, unsinkable 8 au. Thank you Taylor Swift.  
> will updates tags with new chapters; first few chapters will be world building, before the 🤏Shoni content rlly begins

Bernice had pulled her aside before they’d left for the airport; had hugged her and quietly told her to please look after Martha, to make sure she got something out of this programme, because Martha really needed something like this. Toni understood; she’d spent the last year trying to distract Martha from the nightmare of the very publicised trial, holding her as she cried and cried into the early hours. And, Bernice wasn’t looking too good herself, Toni had thought; her eyes hollow, her face taut from stress, fine lines etched deeper. So she’d nodded, really meaning it, even if she didn’t believe in it herself; she’d forced down her own exhaustion, her own misery. Bernice had kissed her on the forehead and hugged her again and Martha had come out of the house, smiling at them in the early morning half-light.

O O O

‘They said there’d be a guy to collect us’ Martha says through bites of the sandwich she’d been too nauseous to eat on the plane, and Toni still has hers, but truthfully, she still feels a bit too wobbly to eat. Her first time on a plane had been totally fine, but the pilot had botched the landing, bouncing them along the tarmac in a way that almost had her life flashing before her eyes. 

Toni scans the exit hall of DFW airport; it’s bustling, a seething mass of crumpled businessmen and travel company employees holding signs, none of which bear their names. Then, right there, she spots something unusual in the crowd, and she groans and sits back onto her suitcase, waving in the general direction for Martha.

‘Look: the cowboy hat. That’s probably him.’

Apparently seeing them at the same time, the cowboy hat starts to bob towards them, and a boy in a plaid shirt holding a piece of paper printed with ‘Martha and Toni - Dawn of Eve’ emerges from the crowd. Toni sizes him up; he’s tan and fresh-faced, wearing a pair of wranglers held up by a belt with a ridiculous belt buckle, and he's got this lopsided grin already stretched across his teeth as he approaches them.

‘Hi there,’ he calls out. ‘Martha and Toni?’

‘Yeah, that’s us.’ Martha answers, and she's smiling widely at him and Toni knows that later, she's going to get an earful about his southern accent, because Martha loves to buy into all that corny bullshit.

‘Spencer,’ he says, tipping his hat at each of them in turn, like they've just stepped into a saloon on the western frontier. ‘Nice to see y’all made it here in one piece.’

He takes both of their suitcases and starts walking towards the exit, Martha falling into step beside him and chattering about the flight, charmed by his southern-gentleman demeanour. Toni stays a few paces back, examining him further; he’s tall, and bulky too, though he’s probably only a little younger than them. He has the clip of a pocket knife visible in his back pocket, and an empty holster on his belt, the same tan colour as his hat. A pit settles in Toni’s stomach; she follows him through the revolving doors. 

Heat blasts them as they step out into the car park, and Toni’s thin sweatpants that had felt highly optimistic in Minneapolis suddenly feel oppressively hot. Thankfully, the white pickup Spencer’s directing them towards is very close by, and they clamber into the backseat while he loads up their luggage.

‘How cool is this? A real-life cowboy just picked us up!’ Martha giggles, faux-batting her eyelashes, clasping her hands together in a way she knows Toni hates. ‘A real _cute_ cowboy!’

Toni smiles back weakly and nods, saved from having to answer as Spencer hops in and cranks on the air con. The radio turns on as he keys the ignition; it’s set to some bogus country station, but Martha immediately recognises the song as a Taylor Swift song and hums along as they pull onto the highway.

The drive out of Dallas is supposed to be about an hour and a half; Bernice had told them this over and over when obsessively going over the minutiae of their travel plans before they’d left. Toni’s happy to just look out of the window, letting Martha fill the silence with small talk, idly watching as the big limestone buildings start to become more and more infrequent until they’re driving down roads bordered by nothing but wide open fields.

‘So did y’all read the leaflet and website and stuff?’ 

Spencer makes eye contact with Toni in the rearview mirror, prompting her to talk, and she’s fucking irritated that she’s being roped in.

‘Yeah, I read it.’ She says, flatly. ‘It sounds kind of weird, I can’t lie.’

‘The activities and stuff sound fun,’ Martha says, side-eyeing Toni, wordlessly telling her not to be rude, ‘but we were a little confused by the name. Toni said it sounded like a cult.’

Spencer chuckles at that. They’re driving through a small town, and Toni swears she just saw a bar with honest-to-God saloon doors. 

‘Yeah, I know. But the lady who designed the whole thing was like, super convinced it had to be somethin’ like that.’

‘But “The Dawn of Eve”?’ Martha presses on. ‘Are we going to be sewn into a bear suit in a burning barn?’

‘She wanted it to be like, girl power, I guess.’ Spencer smiles, then seems to check himself. ‘Not that I don’t think that’s a good thing! Uh, I’m just sayin’ that I think she wanted to market the programme in a way that was sorta different to what it’s really like, I think. ’

He pulls off the road, through an open gate, and onto a dirt track. Toni notes the metal plaque on the fence; “Trinity Ranch” written in capitals, framed by a cross emblem on both sides.

Sensing their confusion, he continues. 

‘And I don’t get the reference, but no flammable material is allowed near the barn. Ranch rules. My fa- _Mr Goodkind_ will tell you more about when we get there.’ 

Interesting. He’s David Goodkind’s son. Toni’s uneasiness doubles; that’s the guy who’s supposedly running this whole retreat. She doesn’t like this whole keep-it-in-the-family thing that’s unveiling itself; she randomly thinks back to that documentary on Charles Manson that Regan had made her watch with her that had freaked her out for days.

‘Ohmigosh, look!’

Toni leans over to see what Martha’s pointing at; a vast grassy field, dotted with dozens and dozens of cows. 

‘That’s only a fraction of them,’ Spencer tells them, ‘you’ll get to meet some of them later.’

Martha winds down her window with glee, sticking her head out to get a better look and grabbing Toni’s hand. Toni squeezes her wrist, forcing herself to temporarily swallow her unease, because if it makes Martha laugh, then fuck it, she’s gonna stick out the weirdness. Martha had stopped laughing back home. 

O O O 

They roll to a stop outside a wooden barn. There are a few other trucks and bizarrely, a sleek black town car, parked alongside them. 

‘Dang, I think we’re the last to arrive. Better hustle.’ Spencer ushers them through the open door of the barn, though he seems reluctant to enter himself. He instead busies himself unloading their bags.

Several hay bales have been intriguingly arranged in the clear space of the middle; Toni counts five other girls around her age sitting on a bale each, facing a blonde woman standing in front of them.

‘Hi, girls. Pull up a bale, if you will.’ 

The woman doesn’t have a southern accent, and she looks exceptionally out of place in her business suit and heels. 

‘Okay, now we’re all here, I wanted to introduce myself.' She speaks fluently and naturally, well-practised in the way she paces as she talks, like she's pitching a revolutionary idea. 'I’m Gretchen Klein (PhD), and I designed the programme you’re all attending this summer.’ 

‘So, what is the Dawn of Eve? Well, to paraphrase the brochure, it’s a chance to form a circle of feminine energy to draw power, healing, and strength in a healthy and supported way.’

Toni takes an immediate dislike to her.

‘It’s an opportunity to step away from the challenges of your normal life, and to find solace and strength in honest activities and to revitalize your mind, body, and soul.’

She tunes out; she’s already read this shit on the website, and it’s equally meaningless now as it was then; a mess of buzzwords without real substance. She takes the time to look at some of the other girls; to her left, the girl in cargo shorts is absent-mindedly tugging handfuls of hay from her bale, and to her right, a girl in a juicy couture zipup is picking at her nails. None of them seem to actually be listening to Gretchen; Toni sees the same contemptuous vacancy in their expressions that she’s been feeling herself. 

Gretchen stops her spiel abruptly as someone else enters the barn; Toni recognizes him instantly from his photo on the website. He strides over to join Gretchen in front of them all, and she seems a little unsure, suddenly. 

‘If I might take over, Ms Klein,’ He says, his accent strong and authoritative. There’s an odd little moment of tension between them as Gretchen glares at him, but she concedes and steps back, letting him take the floor.

‘Nice to meet y’all. David Goodkind,’ he’s dressed similarly to his son, the same rugged all-american vibe, the only difference the handgun gleaming in its holster. ‘And I also run this programme. Some of y’all might know me already.’

He looks at the girl in cargo shorts next to Toni, and she shifts uncomfortably under his gaze.

‘Now, I just wanted to say that although everythin’ that Ms Klein is sayin’ is true, I just wanted to assure y’all that the Dawn of Eve isn’t all that new-age buzzword bull.’ He says it with a smile, jokingly, and Gretchen chuckles, the humourlessness of it betraying her irritation at being undermined. ‘It’s also about combining that stuff with some good, old-fashioned Texas sensibilities. This is a chance for y’all to step away from the trials of the modern world and really get back to basics, back to how things should really be.’

His eyes linger on Toni for a second, and she feels that shiver of unease again.

‘Thank you, David,’ Gretchen says stiffly. ‘Inspiring words as always. Uh, before I go, I’d like to hand out these itineraries.’

She walks around, handing out printed schedules. Toni flips hers open; apparently, they’re currently in the middle of a “Friendly and Reassuring Welcome Chat”. She rolls her eyes.

‘What the fuck is an “Offbeat Wellness Check”?’ The girl to her right says, scoffs. 

‘Those are one-on-one informal chats with me about your aims and progress for the summer.’ Gretchen answers evenly. Toni has one scheduled in for a couple of days from now, before kayaking but after morning yoga. 

‘Uh, if I may- what’s your name?’ David says, interrupting again, and this time there's this brief flash of ugliness across his face before it's relaxed and unreadable again.

‘Fatin. Jadmani.’

‘Well, Miss Jadmani, I sure would appreciate it if you didn’t use foul language,’ He says it amicably, quietly, but with enough steel that it’s just shy of aggressive. ‘Not while you’re on my ranch.’ 

Fatin nods slowly; He holds her gaze for a moment before he looks away, and Fatin mumbles something under her breath. Toni can’t be sure of what she said exactly, but she gets the general idea from the few colourful swears she picks out.

‘Listen, ladies- to get the most out of this, you’ve really gotta lean into it. This programme...it’s designed to help you. I hope you can understand that, eventually.’ 

He’s making eye contact with them each in turn, and the hairs on the back of Toni's neck twitch from his quiet intensity. She wishes that Bernice had gotten a bursary to some summer camp that was on the coast, or even in the inner city; anywhere that’s not as isolated as this ranch in deep, rural Texas. This guy is fucking spooky, and he moves like he's acutely aware of every muscle, like even the most minute of his movement is perfectly calculated.

Gretchen looks like she might say something else, but she just nods curtly.

‘I’ll see you guys for your OWCs. Goodbye.’ 

Nobody says anything as she leaves; there’s a pause as they listen to the crunch of the town car’s low suspension as it drags away down the dirt road. 

‘Alright, guys. The girl who’ll be leadin’ y’all should be arrivin’ soon, so why don’t y’all go wait outside?’

They start to file out, but David sticks his arm out and stops the girl in the cargo shorts.

‘Dot, mind hangin’ back? I wanted to have a word.’

Outside, they stand around in the late afternoon, not talking; even Martha’s excitement seems to have been quelled by the oddness of the introduction. Toni peers back into the barn, where David has a hand on Dot’s shoulder and is talking quietly to her. 

She really can’t figure this place out; on one hand, it’s this wholesome, peppy little nature and wellness retreat, but there’s this odd undercurrent of christian conservatism that makes her wonder if she should be afraid.

A noise makes Toni whip her head forward guiltily, just in time to see a girl round the corner of the barn; on a fucking horse, of course. She rides up to them and dismounts with ease, practised fluidity, one hand holding her cowboy hat tightly to her head.

‘Hi, there,’ She chirps, all bright green eyes and wide smiles. 

Toni rolls her eyes.

  
  



	2. baseball cap

The way Shelby Goodkind greets them is efficient and formulaic; she tugs each of them into a tight hug, smiling earnestly as they say their names, then finishing with a polite ‘Nice to meet you!’. 

Toni’s last and she pauses for just a second, a flash of recognition passing over her face before she hugs her. She smells of vanilla and woodsmoke, and Toni soon concludes that she is really fucking annoying. She’s docked (?) the horse to the barn and is giving them the tour of what will be their haunt for the summer with painful enthusiasm. She's walking them towards another farmhouse that she says has been converted into the residential unit where they’ll be sleeping tonight, and shows them a firepit and, intriguingly, a hot tub, nestled in a paved enclave. Toni’s half listening to her, half watching Martha, who’s hanging onto Shelby’s words like they’re gospel, entranced. Shelby walks them further, speaking brightly and incessantly, and brings them to a fenced pen; inside, Toni recognises Spencer (and is momentarily freaked out by how fucking similar he looks to his father), two boys she doesn’t know, and a gigantic, angry, cow. 

‘What the fuck are they doing?’ Fatin says derisively. Toni’s beginning to get the sense that she’ll find an ally in Fatin; she’s proving herself to be the most tolerable of the strangers as of yet. At least, she’s sharing Toni’s disdain for the squeaky-clean wholesomeness of both Shelby and the retreat as a whole so far.

‘They’re tryin’ to wrangle her into the crush to check her health,’ Shelby says, pointing towards a freaky metal cage. ‘She’s pregnant.’

One of the boys notices the group of girls and inexplicably takes his shirt off, tucking it into his belt. He waves at them before turning around and splaying his arms, easily corralling the cow into the crush and bolting it in. 

‘God, he’s got a fucking body on him,’ Fatin mutters, then yells, ‘Hey! Farmhand of my dreams- yeah, you! Come show me the rodeo of my life!’

‘Fatin!’

Toni notes with satisfaction that Shelby looks mortified by Fatin’s forwardness; she ignores her and winks at the boy, waving coquettishly. He puts an exaggerated swagger into his walk as he moves towards them; Fatin smirks as he hops the fence. Shelby wraps an arm loosely around his waist. He’s categorically handsome, Toni supposes; blue-eyed and well-built, but with the annoying swagger of someone who knows it all too well.

‘This is my boyfriend, Andrew,’ She says awkwardly, avoiding looking at Fatin as she introduces him. He grunts his hellos and starts pulling Shelby into him, kissing her cheek and wrapping his arms around her, and she tries to subtly squirm away from him, laughing embarrassedly. 

‘This is my little brother, Spencer, and- Andrew, get off me, stop gettin’ your sweat all up on me! And this- _Andrew!_ Get off! This is Quinn.’ 

Quinn is lanky, pale, fidgeting nervously as he stands.

‘You have a different hat.’ Nora blurts out, unprompted. 

It’s true; he’s in a baseball cap, and he reaches up to touch the hem, as if to check. 

‘Yes. Um, I bought a cowboy hat but it didn’t fit in my suitcase.’ He mumbles.

Andrew releases Shelby and claps his arm around Quinn’s shoulders, making him jump and smile weakly.

‘Quinn here is just visiting from _Vermont_ ,’ Andrew laughs, raising his voice an octave and putting on a New England accent, ‘to learn how the real men do it down South.’

‘My father thought it would be, um, advisable, to, quote-unquote, “toughen up” before I leave for college next year,’ Quinn speaks fast, without taking a breath, ‘He wants me to join the same frat that he and Mr Goodkind met at, so, uh, he sent me here.’

Toni pities him; he does not look like the type who can hack farm work, and indeed, as he bends over to pick up the cap Andrew has knocked off his head, she can see a deep red sunburn on the back of his neck where the cap hadn’t protected him. 

‘So, givin’ them the tour, hey, Shelbs?’ Andrew says, ‘Have you shown them the quarry yet?’

Shelby’s smile falters, and she’s fiddling with something around her neck; Toni hadn’t noticed her cross necklace before. It's small, plain; a deep gold glint as she twists it between her fingers.

‘Shelby’s afraid of the quarry,’ Andrew continues when she doesn’t answer, jostling her, ‘aren’t you, Shelbs? Won’t go up there, will you?’

Shelby looks at the ground, saying nothing, just nods dumbly; an uncomfortable pause hangs as Andrew looks at her expectantly. 

The silence deepens; Toni suddenly hates her for being so pathetic

‘We’ll show them later, Andrew,’ Spencer finally says, stiffly, and Toni watches as Shelby's shoulders sink with relief as he directs the group's attention onto him. ‘Let’s go back to the barn before it gets dark.’

O O O 

Toni looks at Shelby as they walk back; she's lost her peppiness, and is walking alone, fidgeting with her necklace. 

The barn door is open, lit by flickering bulbs. Inside, David’s sitting amid their suitcases, which lie open; bizarrely, it looks like they’ve been rummaged in.

‘Hey, what the-’ Toni starts, and the gaze David fixes her with is so coolly detached that it’s disarming enough to make her catch herself. ‘Um. What’s going on?’

‘You agreed to a luggage shakedown. It’s in the contract.’ 

Of course Toni hasn’t read any fucking contract. (She’d let Bernice handle all the bureaucracy. Filling out forms is so fucking depressing.) 

Dot evidently hasn’t either, because she suddenly looks very tense, her back stiffening. Nobody else seems to bat an eyelid; evidently, they were expecting being searched like a bunch of common criminals. 

‘It’s for your safety.’ David shrugs, ‘I’m confiscatin’ any items that I think will be counterintuitive to the programme’

He presents several clear ziplock bags. Toni’s eye twitches; she’s going to be utterly fucked off if anything gets confiscated from her, like she’s some irresponsible child.

‘Miss Rilke-’ He holds up a bag; it contains a book, pretentiously titled _The Nature of Her._

Toni notices Leah properly for the first time; she had been so quiet, so vacant, earlier today, but now she’s jittering, panicked, eyes darting from the book to David and back again.

‘No, you can’t- I need that.’

‘I’m sorry. I think it’s inappropriate; given your situation.’ He says impassively, cryptically, but it's with this deep finality, somehow.

For a split second, Leah anxiously picks at the skin of her temple, looking as if she might freak out, before she takes a deep breath and nods her agreement.

‘Dot.’ He holds up two separate bags, each stuffed with several cartons of cigarettes. 

Dot’s jaw clenches but she says nothing and he moves on to the next ziplock. Toni frowns at the first name basis, confused at the apparent familiarity between the two.

‘And Miss Jadmani.’ He doesn’t lift this bag. Toni cranes her neck to see that it contains a few packets of condoms, a vape, and an electric toothbrush, and she nearly laughs out loud.

‘You’re kidding,’ Fatin snorts. ‘I can’t keep those?’

‘Again: they’re not appropriate-’

‘Are you serious? How could safe sex and good dental hygiene ever _not_ be-’

‘Please, Miss Jadmani,’ David has raised his voice, almost imperceptibly. ‘Don’t argue. I implore you to remember why you’re on this retreat.’

Toni thinks for sure that Fatin’s going to push further, but surprisingly, she sits down, eyes glinting and stormy, hands bunched into fists.

‘Your phones, as well,’ he says, and his authority is now just so tangible that nobody even groans or complains; Toni drops her phone into a bag, unhappily, and Martha looks positively thrilled to be going analogue, genuinely smiling as she hands over hers. 

Clearing his throat, David stands, ziplocks tucked under his arm. 

‘Okay, that’s all. You probably won’t see a lot of me from now on. Enjoy the retreat, ladies,’ His smile is so clipped, professional, emotionless, and Toni’s uneasy again. ‘Shelby’ll take you to dinner.’

O O O 

The eight of them sit around the table in the communal kitchen. The room, Toni admits, is decorated quite nicely; a traditional farmhouse interior. The only indication that it belongs to an identical, blonde family with some apparent nutty Christian ideals is in the small crucifix that hangs above the modest TV; it looks like it’s been crafted out of deer antlers.

Rachel had pointed it out to her, had whispered, ‘Hey, look at that; bunch of cracked-out fucking Jesus freaks’, as they’d filed in.

Nobody’s speaking now; there's this tense silence and Leah looks utterly distraught and Fatin’s seething quietly into her plate. Toni’s fucking exhausted after a twenty hour day and she hopes that they’ll continue quietly so she can leave as soon as possible, but she hadn’t reckoned for Shelby’s faith in small talk.

‘How are you guys findin’ the food so far?’

Toni takes a bite of her ham sandwich; it’s okay. 

‘It’s very nice, Shelby.’ Martha says, from her seat next to Shelby at the head of the table. Toni doesn’t have the energy to be jealous right now; let Martha befriend all the boring white girls she wants.

Toni finishes eating and is so ready to head to bed but Shelby insists that they stay seated for some ice breakers, and Martha looks so genuinely excited at the prospect that she doesn’t argue when Shelby makes them go around the table and say their names and a fun fact (Toni’s: she likes basketball. Dot’s: those cigarettes were meant to last her an entire fucking month).

She lets Shelby run them through a stilted game of two truths and a lie as well, but she can’t get into it because firstly, it’s stupid, and secondly, Fatin is still stewing beside her. It feels good that for once, Toni isn’t the one souring the mood. 

‘Fatin? Everything ok?’ Shelby’s bravery is commendable, as is the way she furrows her brow with concern that Toni knows is fabricated.

Fatin sighs, leans forward in her chair. 

‘No, Shelby. Your dad stole my shit. And I’m spending my summer on a literal farm. And I don’t even have my phone.’

‘You’ll do better on the retreat if your phone, and, uh, your other things, aren’t distractin’ you. You knew what you were signing up for; you signed the consent forms.’

Shelby hasn’t picked a very good line of argument; Fatin bristles.

‘Are you serious?’ she laughs. ‘Do you think I voluntarily signed up for this shit?’

‘Maybe! Why else would you be here?’

‘Because,’ Fatin waves her arms, ‘I accidentally did meth- one time! - and then I set a cello on fire.’

There’s a shocked silence; Toni tries to work out whether she’s meant to laugh because it’s such a bizarre thing to say, but Fatin’s delivery is deadly serious.

‘I thought the pill was molly. It wasn’t. So my parents sent me here,’ Fatin says bitterly. ‘You know what? In the interests of bonding and singing _kumbaya_ , like you’re trying to get us to do, Shelby, let’s just get it all out in the open; what made your parents sign _you_ up? Leah?’

There’s a pause as Leah tries to work out whether Fatin’s being serious, but she’s looking at her so expectantly that she licks her lips nervously and answers, nonsensically, ‘I got hit by a car. And I had sex.’

‘Okay, great,’ Fatin smiles humourlessly. ‘Thanks for fucking sharing! Rachel? Nora? Dot?’

She’s gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles are turning white. 

There’s a pause before they all answer at once.

‘I ain’t fucking telling you.’ Rachel says, simultaneous with Dot’s ‘Give it a rest, Fatin. Calm down.’

Fatin’s starting to look really fucking unhinged, and there's this desperation in her eyes, her stretched smile, that's difficult to watch.

‘Who else? Martha? What traumatic event got _you_ shipped out here?’ Fatin says sarcastically and her voice is rising higher and higher in pitch as she talks and Toni’s stomach drops. Martha, who’d been looking steadfastly down at her plate throughout Fatin’s entire freakout, now looks up, blinking heavily.

Fuck, Toni is _not_ about to let Fatin force Martha into talking about the whole Dr Ted thing in front of everyone; she tries to engineer a way out and ends up blurting out the first painful detail of her life that comes to mind.

‘My foster parents make me pack heroin.’ 

It feels like shit to spill this part of her personal life to a group of almost-strangers but it’s so much better than the alternative, and it’s absurd enough to take Fatin’s manic attention away from Martha and onto her. Toni’s prepared to make that sacrifice. 

‘How exciting!’ Fatin’s eyes are wide and frenzied, and she’s trembling now. ‘What about _you_ , Shelby? What terrible thing happened to you that gave you the authority to lead this stupid fucking retreat?’ 

Shelby’s mouth is slightly parted like she’s thinking of something to say; nothing comes out.

‘That’s what I thought.’ Fatin says bitterly, and she gets up and leaves the table, sandwich untouched. Toni accidentally makes eye contact with Nora and she knows they both look equally fucking confused.

‘I- um,’ Shelby starts, and she’s touching her necklace again, and they’re all sitting in stunned silence. Toni does wonder if Fatin’s got a point; she wonders whether Shelby has any idea about struggle, any justification for leading a group of people who are apparently a lot more damaged than she’d expected. 

‘Oh my God, everybody here is crazy,’ Rachel says, quietly, to the silence.

‘I’m not fucking crazy.’ Leah says abruptly, randomly, though Toni doesn’t think it was directed at her.

There’s another pause as they watch Leah screech her chair back and quickly leave. Nora is examining the grain of the table with extreme interest. A door slams upstairs. 

Shelby runs her hands through her hair, apparently collecting herself, because then it's with impressive speed that she rolls with the punch; she smooths out her features and cracks an inappropriately wide smile and says, cheerily, ‘Okay, guys. Take a room each upstairs. I’m first on the left.’ 

She too leaves, and Toni’s about to congratulate herself on _not_ being the one to have a meltdown for once, and she randomly thinks that Regan would be so impressed if she knew, but Martha’s hiding her tears as she gets up from the table and Toni suddenly feels ill again. 

O O O

She’s lying in her room now, staring at the ceiling, hands clenched into fists. The walls are thin enough that she can hear Martha crying from the next room along. It’s only about 1am, and Toni’s so tired, but she’s waiting for Martha to seek her out, like she always does when the memories of last year get too much. It’s happened enough that Toni now knows that Martha prefers to come to her on her own terms, when she’s ready; then, Toni will stay up and hold her until she cries herself out into Toni’s shoulder. 

On nights like these, she passes the time waiting for Martha by thinking of all the different ways she’s going to make Dr Ted hurt; sometimes she fantasizes about sticking a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, sometimes it’s enough to think about what the other prisoners are doing to him now that they’ve had enough time to find out that he’s in for sexual abuse of multiple children.

It’s not enough that he’s in prison; he’s still affecting their daily lives, he’s inescapable. His case was pretty high profile and the media won’t shut up about him and Toni’s so fucking tired of it all, of all the shitty things she does to pay rent so Bernice has enough money spare to hire a therapist for Martha and it’s never enough, no matter how many scores of heroin she skims from her foster parents to sell herself.

There’s a tap at the door and the soft pad of Martha’s feet as she crosses the room and Toni throws back the comforter so she can curl up next to her, and her face is already wet from tears as she buries it in Toni’s sweater. Toni doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around her, and she keeps staring at the ceiling, and it’s all so unjust, and Martha didn’t deserve it, and she suddenly feels this violence; this deep, consuming hatred for the world.

  
  



	3. flooded quarry

Toni wakes up at 6am and she groans because she fucking hates early mornings, but she’s a little on edge from sleeping in a new environment so she can’t get back to sleep. She chucks on some joggers and a sweater and tiptoes down the stairs and out the door, intending to go for a run to work out some of the rage that’s been festering since Martha had finished crying, murmured a quiet ‘Thanks, Toni’ and gone back to her own bed, sometime around 3am. 

She’s out the door before she clocks Shelby, who’s stretching against the side of the house, and she inwardly groans, because it’s just her luck that Shelby’s also in running gear and already fixing her with a bright smile.

‘Mornin'! It’s Toni, right? Going for a run?’

Toni nods and she must not look too convinced by her cheeriness because Shelby changes tack, straightens up and folds her arms, puts on this corny competitive smirk.

‘Wanna race?’ She says, like they’re five years old, and Toni’s gut reaction is a solid NO, but she says it so condescendingly that Toni decides she’ll do it just to wipe the smile off her face.

So she nods again, and she’s rolling her shoulders, about to start stretching, and Shelby says, ‘Wait, your shoelaces are undone.’

Her shoelaces are tightly double-knotted and when she looks back up and dumbly says ‘What?’, it’s to thin air, because Shelby’s turned and is bolting away with no warning, and Toni curses and books it after her and she’s annoyed at herself for actually being amused by Shelby’s dumb little prank. Shelby’s laughing as she’s running and it only fuels Toni’s pettiness, so she forces herself to work harder and she’s fast, but she’s not used to running on grass damp from dew, so it’s Shelby that leads them, across a field and into the woods. Toni makes back lost ground on the packed dirt track and she’s ahead now, with Shelby close on her tail. Her lungs are burning, and there’s a truly worrying moment where she thinks that she might be bested by the blandest human she’s genuinely ever met; thankfully, the path they’re on forks, and Toni takes the uphill path, hoping that she’ll be able to outlast Shelby on the incline. 

She makes it about 20 metres down the new path before she realises that Shelby isn’t behind her anymore; she’s stopped, standing at the fork in the path, like she’s reluctant to follow Toni any further. 

‘Shelby?’ 

Toni looks down the path to see what Shelby’s so afraid of, but there’s no hungry cougar or brown bear or anything that would prompt such an extreme response; the wood is quiet and empty.

‘You win, Toni.’ Shelby calls out to her, and she just turns and walks away.

Toni watches her leave for a moment, baffled. She decides to investigate; Shelby had looked so deathly frightened of whatever’s up the path, and sue her, she’s a little nosey, so she slows to a jog and continues. The path ends after another 100 metres, and Toni’s standing in a clearing on a plateau; in front of her, there’s a cliff edge where the ground just drops away almost vertically, and she’s looking down at this fucking massive flooded quarry. It’s probably about a 40 metre fall from where she is to the water pooled at the bottom. Across the water, there’s no cliff but a gentle gradient, where the bright chemical blue water runs into an empty gravel beach. It’s beautiful, but it’s perfectly still, eerily quiet, and the hairs stand up on the back of Toni’s neck at the utter lifelessness of it; she can’t hear any birds, and there’s not even a breath of wind. But, it’s not, like, terrifying; not enough for her to refuse to come up here. She picks up a pebble and throws it, watches as it sails through the air and hits the still water with a splash, breaking the silence and sending ripples across the surface. Satisfied, she dusts off her hands and heads back.

O O O 

Shelby takes them to the barn after force-feeding them granola at breakfast, and the nervousness she had up by the quarry is now non-existent; she’s so excited she’s practically bouncing off the walls. Spencer, Andrew, and Quinn have appeared, laden with boxes, and Toni hates that she’s sort of curious to find out what’s inside. 

Shelby uses her pocket knife to cut open the boxes, and she’s pulling out these cowboy hats and Toni is aghast when she’s passed a hat; she flips it over, her name is embroidered onto the inside of the brim. 

‘Shelby, these are so cool!’ Martha’s saying as she tries hers on and Toni can’t help but laugh because the hat is fucking huge.

‘These are yours to keep, so,’ Shelby sounds almost shy in what she says next. ‘I thought we could all take a photo in them.’

Rachel looks stony-faced as Shelby lines them up and makes them put their hats on; Toni’s between Fatin and Leah and they both look so unhappy and Toni’s trying to keep a straight face to retain a shred of dignity but she can hear Martha laughing with Nora further down the line so when Spencer yells ‘Cheese!’ and takes the photo, she knows she’s smiling in it.

O O O

From there, Shelby drags them up to an empty field and Toni’s forgotten what was on their schedule for today so she’s really fucking surprised when Andrew pulls up in a truck which is laden with a whole range of guns, ammunition, and empty cans.

‘Wait, what?’ she says because this can’t be serious; no way are they about to arm a bunch of random, and possibly emotionally delicate, teenagers.

‘Didn’t you read the itinerary, Toni?’ Fatin’s wagging her finger at her, grinning. ‘They wanted to kick off the programme with something-’ She puts on Gretchen’s accent, and mimics devil horns with her fingers. ‘-equal parts cathartic and engaging.’

And apparently, it isn’t another elaborate prank because Andrew and Shelby start lining up the cans on the low brick wall that borders the field, and Toni’s still confused. Surely, it’s fucking madness to give clearly unhinged characters like Fatin, or Leah, actual weaponry. But Spencer’s already handing out safety goggles, and Quinn’s drawing a line in the dirt with a stick and Shelby’s practically twirling through a safety briefing. 

She makes them sit on the ground around her as she shows them how to load a handgun, how to hold it, how to stand, how to aim. She’s good; she fires six rounds as an example, and six cans hit the ground. She tells them to always keep the guns pointed towards the wall or at the ground and just like that, they’re let loose with actual guns. Toni looks at Dot at one point, but she just shrugs and says ‘It’s Texas’.

It’s such an unexpectedly lackluster attitude to their safety that Toni can’t quite believe it; she was sure the programme was going to be roasting marshmallows and talking about their feelings but this is actually fun, actually cathartic, and she does get carried away with it almost instantly; the guns are inappropriately high caliber, and it’s fucking fun to feel the recoil and hear the ‘ping!’ as the cans are knocked off the wall.

‘How are you so fucking good?’ Rachel asks her; they’ve entered an unspoken face-off, and Toni’s sunk triple the cans she has.

‘I did it a lot as a kid.’

‘Who the fuck gave a kid a gun?’ 

Toni doesn’t answer; she’s not going to just randomly tell Rachel about her home life. She's certainly no Fatin, who seems to have made it her mission to spill every incongruous secret of her own; Toni intends to keep her own secrets, her own struggles, in Minneapolis.

Fatin’s next to her and she’s struggling to adjust for recoil, knocking herself backwards with every shot. Shelby’s been watching them keenly and she approaches Fatin, somewhat nervously, no doubt in response to Fatin’s freakout at her last night.

‘You’re, uh, holdin’ it wrong.’ She says, motioning to move closer. ‘Can I help you?’

Fatin regards her for a moment before nodding and Shelby moves behind her, hugs her from behind so she can arrange and stabilise Fatin’s arms properly. Something flashes across Fatin’s face and she suddenly presses herself back into Shelby, grinding on her and exaggeratedly moaning ‘ugh, just like that!’

Toni laughs because it’s so stupid, but Shelby jumps backwards like she’s been burnt, eyes wide with alarm, and she’s not laughing at all. 

‘What are you doin’?’ She exclaims, still backpedalling. ‘Don’t- don’t do that kind of stuff around me.’

Everybody’s watching now and Toni doesn’t find it funny anymore because she recognizes something in Shelby’s tone that she’s intimately familiar with.

‘Just a little joke, Shelby, calm down’ Fatin shrugs.

Toni knows she shouldn’t press it but Shelby’s being so weird about it that she feels like she owes it to herself, so she says ‘What’s so wrong with it, Shelby?’

Shelby glances at her wildly, then straightens out her expression and seems to pick her next words very carefully.

‘I don’t like pornographic jokes.’ she says quietly, tactfully, and she’s flushing bright red, a deep blush rising up her neck.

‘Pornographic jokes? Or gay jokes?’ Toni asks; she knows she sounds aggressive, accusatory, but it spills out of her so easily. 

The long pause Shelby takes before she answers is all she needs to know. The mood sours instantly.

‘You’re such a fucking cliche, Shelby.’ She scoffs, and it’s true. 

The others seem to be waiting for Shelby to say something.

‘I was just raised that way, okay?’ Shelby says, helplessly, gesturing with her hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

Then everyone’s looking disappointed, shaking their heads and muttering about wrong opinions and how it’s just not cool. Spencer and Andrew have missed the whole thing; they’ve driven off to get more rounds.

‘I’m sorry.’ Shelby says again, but they’re all turning away, shifting their focus away from her, re-investing themselves in the guns, and her apology is to thin air.

Toni misses her next shot; she’s angry at herself, both for having fun on this stupid retreat in the first place but also because she’s partly responsible for ruining the fun again and it’s just so boringly typical of her that she could scream.

Things eventually warm up again when Quinn shows Nora how to fire a shotgun and the recoil is so vast and they both don’t expect it at all, so Nora staggers back into him and they collapse into a heap and are laughing too hard to stand up.

Andrew comes back and Shelby’s sitting with him, and Toni only looks once; he’s got his arm around her waist and they’re not talking, and she hates her again. She’s pissed off at herself for being so friendly with her on their run this morning, so she busies herself with Martha, who hasn’t hit a single target all day, mostly because she closes her eyes every time she pulls the trigger. Toni sits on the grass next to her, talks her through the process in microscopic steps, and Martha’s smile when she starts landing shots is so worth it that Toni gets over it; Shelby is just another homophobe, like she’s dealt with a hundred times before. Yeah, she’s fucking mad, but she’s got a better hold of herself, now that she's older and wiser or whatever. She promises herself that she won’t rise to the bait, won’t argue with Shelby, won’t even talk to her; she’ll just ignore her completely, for her own sanity. Regan would be so proud.

O O O

And then they finish up, and in the evening, Spencer finds them a basketball and she shoots hoops with Rachel on this raggedy dirt patch for a while, and when she goes into the communal bathroom to brush her teeth, Martha’s bent over laughing with Fatin about Fatin’s humongous skincare caboodle, and she smiles at Toni in the mirror as Fatin rummages for her toothpaste. Toni, with uncharacteristic fickleness, changes her mind again, wonders if she will actually get something out of this redneck fucking retreat after all.

  
  



	4. cargo shorts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter for today. trigger warning: plot exposition. bear with.

This morning, Toni’s going on another run, but this time, she carefully checks that outside is Shelby-free before she dares to leave. She’s just about to take off when she notices someone sitting in the little paved enclave next to the house; it’s Dot and Fatin, and they’re smoking. 

‘I thought everything in your suitcase got confiscated,’ Toni says to Dot, moving to sit beside them. 

‘Cargo shorts,’ Dot shrugs, ‘They’ve got a lot of storage.’

She shuffles over so Toni can have more of the bench.

‘You want one?’

‘Thanks.’ Toni hasn’t smoked for a while. They’re a luxury she can’t afford.

They sit in silence for a while, admiring the landscape. There’s a mountain range in the far distance that had been shrouded in the twilight and fog before, and the air is refreshingly cool; the sun’s just risen, making the dew on the acres of open long grass sparkle.

‘It’s a good view.’ Toni remarks.

‘Hm. I’ve seen it enough.’ Dot says.

‘You grew up round here?’

‘Yeah. A little closer to the town.’

Fatin looks deathly tired, yawning like she’s still half asleep, and she's got her sunglasses on even though it's still early morning.

‘Dorothy was just telling me about her conspiracy theories to this retreat.’

That piques Toni’s interest; she didn’t know that anyone else had picked up on the weird vibe she’s been getting.

Dot drags on her cigarette.

‘‘Not a conspiracy theory. I’m, like, 99% sure I’m right. How much do you know about David? Did you look into him before you came?’

‘No.’ Toni admits, suddenly feeling like a dunce. The website for the Dawn of Eve had been fucking boring, and she’d just seen his photo, read the opening sentence of his bio (‘ _Hello. I’m David Goodkind, and I believe that real human connection happens in the great outdoors’)_ , and she’d clicked off.

‘Okay, well, he owns this ranch, right? But he also owns, like, multiple ranches across the state, and he’s _moneyed_ off it. The Goodkinds supply, like, a quarter of all the meat and leather that leaves the state.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Right? He acts so fucking salt-of-the-earth, in his little blue-collar Levi’s and humble starched shirts,’ Fatin says, ashing her cigarette. ‘But Dorothy told me he’s gunning for, like, political power with this whole thing.’

‘Yeah,’ Dot nods. ‘He’s all about laying down roots with all the Christian, republican types across the south.’

‘So what’s your theory?’

‘You’re like, indigenous, right? You and Martha both?’ 

‘Yeah. We’re here on a bursary.’

‘Okay, that makes sense: see, by running this retreat, David gets to show that he’s helping out poor reservation kids,’ She says, and Toni’s stomach turns. ‘I think the whole programme is a vanity project for him to come across like he’s a hero, rehabilitating all these damaged teenagers.’ 

There’s a pause as Toni’s skin prickles, and she remembers just how eager the correspondence had been between Bernice and him, how happy he had been to offer her and Martha the bursary once he’d heard their situation. 

‘Fucked up, right?’ Fatin laughs bitterly. ‘He contacted my parents specifically. Told them he could take a wild LA girl like me and make her, like, modest, outdoorsy, domestic, whatever the fuck. Dusty old Christians will shit their pants from excitement when they read that in the church newspaper.’

‘With Nora and Rachel, he’s showing white suburbia that he’s ticking the “helping inner city black people” box, even though they’re probably more educated than the rest of us combined.’ Dot continues, inappropriately nonchalantly.

‘Wait, so why are you here?’ Toni says, and she mentally slaps herself for being so untactful, but Dot looks unfazed.

‘He’s paying me to be here. 80 bucks a day.’

Toni frowns, confused, at the same time as Fatin says, ‘Dorothy! You kept that quiet! Explain.’

Dot drags her cigarette and for a moment, Toni thinks she’s not going to answer.

‘My dad died,’ she finally says, resignedly. ‘He was sort of a figure of the community round here. Everybody knew him. I think David wants to be seen helping me, the orphaned daughter, get a grip back on her life.’

Toni looks at her sideways; Dot’s staring at the ground.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, evenly. ‘That’s really fucked up.’

She knows how bad it sucks when people are overly sympathetic.

‘It’s okay,’ Dot says, ‘It was coming for a long time.’

‘Still. Asshole’s exploiting you. That blows.’ Fatin says, ineffectually patting her shoulder, but Dot seems to appreciate it, leaning into the contact.

‘I don’t care. I’m getting paid.’

There’s another pause, and Toni’s mad again. Bernice had jumped through so many hoops to send them on this programme, and it’s all some stunt, stoking some prick’s political career. What a fucking joke.

‘You good, Toni?’ Fatin seems to read her agitation. 

‘Yeah. No. I needed this retreat to help Ma- me. And we’re just, like, pawns for this dick.’

If they notice her stutter, they don't say anything.

‘Listen- that’s just David. If it’s any consolation, that Gretchen lady is the real deal. I had one of those stupid Wellness Chats yesterday, and I wore sunglasses and looked at the ceiling the entire time, but she still somehow tricked me into talking about my fucking feelings,’ Fatin says. ‘She told me she’s been collecting ivy league degrees in psychology and sociology for the last twenty years.’

Dot snorts at that, lights another cigarette. Her lighter is a silver zippo with a Metallica graphic engraved on the side.

‘I wonder how she ended up in the middle of buttfuck, Texas, working with a shitbag like David.’

Toni exhales, watches the curls of smoke fly away on the breeze. It sort of helps, the knowledge that at least Gretchen might have good intentions, but fucking hell. She’s stuck on an ego-boost for some power-hungry religious nut for the summer, and her plane tickets are fixed and non-refundable. 

‘I could’ve made so much money this summer, and instead, I’m going to be kayaking and talking girl power with the Hitler Youth.’

‘You talking about Shelby?’ Fatin laughs, and Toni nods. ‘That girl is a total bint. Who’s actually homophobic anymore? Like, grow up’

Fatin leaps to her feet and starts strutting around like Shelby, imitating her with a bad southern accent.

‘Y’all, I hate gay people! I do every frickin’ thing my darlin’ daddy tells me to do, y’all! I think Rosa Parks is the third member of Destiny’s child!’

It’s not a half-bad impression. 

‘Pageants and fucking Clint Eastwood as a boyfriend. I bet David’s so proud of her.’

Toni notices that Dot’s suddenly looking somber, avoiding their gaze and not joining in. 

‘What, Dorothy? Too cruel?’

‘I don’t know, guys.’ Dot stands, stubbing out the cigarette and tucking it into a portable ashtray she’s conjured out of her shorts. Toni makes a mental note to buy a pair as soon as she gets the chance. ‘Have you met Shelby’s mom yet?’

They shake their heads, though Toni doubts there's no feasible excuse for being so pathetically dogmatic.

‘I think you should reserve judgement until you do,’ She says cryptically, and Toni’s about to ask why but she’s already moving away. ‘I’m gonna take a shower. In a bit, guys.’

Fatin waits until Dot’s out of earshot and Toni's about to make a joke about how she's surprised Dot doesn't have a shower in a cargo pocket but Fatin's fixing her with this hungry intensity and she doesn't get the chance.

‘You’re gay, right?’ she says, looking at her over the top of her sunglasses, and when Toni nods, her eyes flash; she continues. ‘Okay, fucking good. I was worried I was going to have to go to Aryan brotherhood Andrew when I need an orgasm.’

She winks at her, squeezes her knee, and skips back into the house, leaving Toni sitting on the bench. 

O O O 

The day heats up, the sky cloudless; Shelby makes them hike up fucking mount Everest to a viewpoint, and to be fair, it is gorgeous. The whole ranch is spread before them, the cattle tiny brown dots on the vast greenness of the fields, and Toni would’ve liked to enjoy the view a little more but the wholesome activities must go forward and today they’re whittling like they’re boy scouts. She’s sitting next to Leah, who’s holding the rectangle of wood about a centimeter from her nose, whittling with intense focus. 

‘Toni, look.’ Martha shows her the little rabbit she’s carefully hewn out of the wood and Toni unhappily looks down at the busted ass totem she’s created herself. Whittling is harder than Shelby makes it look, irritatingly. 

‘Very nice, Marty.’ 

Now she knows that David doesn’t actually care about them, just cares that they’re there, the lackluster attitude to their safety makes more sense. She decides that she’s not going to tell Martha that they’re here just to be a statistic, just in case by some miracle, Gretchen pulls through where David won’t and manages to untangle some of the messiness, some of the pain, that Martha’s been carrying for so long.

At some point, she nicks her finger with the knife, and the blood has barely started welling out the cut when Shelby flits over, and she’s rummaging in her knapsack and pulls out a first-aid kit. 

‘Um, do you want-’ 

‘I don't need anything from you.’ Toni won’t let her finish, won’t take the plaster from her. Shelby’s face falls and she nods, sits back down, busies herself with her stupid whittled spoon. Toni sticks her finger in her mouth, winces at the sting. She probably could’ve used the plaster, but she’s just too proud to take it. Whatever. Her wooden totem sneers up at her, ugly and splintery, from where she dropped it on the ground.

  
  



	5. empty suitcase

It becomes a bit of a thing, Toni getting up early; meeting Dot and Fatin on the bench in the enclave to smoke cigarettes and chat shit quickly becomes the most tolerable part of her morning. It goes on until Friday, when they look especially mischievous and burst out laughing as she approaches.

‘Hey, baeness,’ Fatin calls out, patting the space beside her, ‘come smoke.’

Toni smells it before she sees it; they’re sharing a joint, and suddenly the summer doesn’t look so dire.

‘How’d this escape the shakedown?’ She says, letting Dot pass it to her. ‘Was this stashed in your ass, Fatin?’

‘Don’t fret! It was just in my underwear,’ Fatin says coyly. ‘Or was it?’

‘I probably wouldn’t even care,’ Dot says, wrinkling her nose. ‘Weed is weed.’

Toni draws on the zoot, and it’s been so long since she last smoked that the harshness of the smoke catches her off guard. 

‘Enjoy it while it lasts. This is the last soldier of the platoon, if you get my drift.’ 

Toni’s eyes water as she tries to suppress a cough.

‘Fuck, you should’ve saved it for when things really get dull.’

Fatin shrugs. ‘Had to celebrate our first Friday somehow. TGIF!’

‘Actually,’ Dot says slowly, spaced out. ‘I think I have something you guys are gonna shit your pants at.’

Fatin’s jaw drops comically.

‘Dorothy, have you  _ also _ got underpants weed?’

Dot rolls her eyes and refuses to say anything else before they finish the zoot, even though Fatin pesters her with impressive persistence; Toni’s fucking stoned as she leads them upstairs to her room, and Dot pulls her empty suitcase out from under the bed.

‘Voila!’

‘Dude. That’s the big reveal?’

Then, she’s fucking amazed because Dot reaches into the bottom of it and fiddles with something, then lifts out an honest-to-God false bottom, and there’s a two-inch-deep space that’s been revealed. 

‘I was planning to deal in Fort Worth over the summer. I guess I underestimated how far we’d be from, like, people.’ 

The space is stuffed to the brim with drugs. 

‘Dorothy,’ Fatin chokes out, like she’s overcome with emotion, ‘I could fucking kiss you right now.’

She leaps to her feet and starts chasing Dot around the room, reaching for her face and making smacking noises, and Toni kneels and starts looking through the stash. It’s so tightly packed that she can’t see everything, but she picks out weed, hash, pills, and a fucking pharmacy’s worth of small prescription bottles, amongst sealed bags of white powder. 

‘They’re mostly coke. Some ketamine.’ Dot says preemptively, ignoring Fatin, who’s pressing wet kisses to both her cheeks, leaving smears of lipstick across her face.

‘Holy shit, Dot.’ It’s taking Toni a while to process the fact that this busted fucking suitcase is suddenly worth thousands of dollars. ‘Where the hell did you get all this?’

‘You remember that guy I was telling you about? Mateo?’ Dot says as Fatin finally releases her and joins Toni by the suitcase, rifling through the plastic.

‘He’s got a brother who’s involved in all this shit, so most comes straight from the border, and the pingers from Holland.’

Toni picks up an orange pill container and reads the label; TIMOTHY CAMPBELL, OXYCONTIN is printed across it, and her stomach twinges a little, penetrating the fog of pleasantness that had settled from the joint.

‘Listen- I have to turn a profit on this, okay? So if you want any, you’ve got to pay me.’

‘Got it. Don’t take any illicit substances, ever, unless you compensate Dorothy first.’ Fatin nods enthusiastically, and she’s still joking around- but there’s suddenly this hunger, this desperation, in her eyes, that Toni recognizes from the first night.

Toni’s fucking blown away, though. Dot being a surreptitious hustler was the last thing she expected, and she is one hundred percent going to have to grill her further on this, because what the actual fuck? But she’s a little too frassed to focus, and her stomach is starting to digest itself from hunger, so she replaces the container and lets Dot replace the false bottom and shove the suitcase back under the bed.

They spill out into the corridor, ravenous for breakfast, and they falter because Shelby’s leaving her room at the same time and they collide in the corridor. There’s this moment of awkwardness as Shelby makes eye contact with Toni, but Dot says, ‘Morning, Shelby’ and she smiles back and they’re walking downstairs together and Toni realises that she’s too tired to actively hate her right now; maybe it’s the weed relaxing her (or maybe the retreat is beginning to work on her- No, no, the idea that moonlight yoga and/or a pilates combo could solve any of Toni’s problems is completely laughable), but she realises that she doesn’t need to actively hate Shelby; the idea of spending the entire summer arguing with some insignificant homophobe suddenly feels so small and childish. So, her big plan is to accept that they don’t get along, and just pretend that Shelby doesn’t exist- and Shelby seems to have adopted the same idea.

She sits next to Martha at breakfast, picks up Martha’s toast, and dunks it into her tea, which elicits an indignant ‘hey!’. It’s a risky litmus test, but Toni’s found that fucking around over breakfast is one of the best ways of working out whether Martha’s had a good or bad night. Martha looks happy, well-rested, and she’s laughing as she snatches Toni’s juice and pours it into her bowl, so Toni shuts up and eats her granola and juice, and it’s fucking delicious.

O O O

Toni’s still stoned when they’re walking to their activity today, which is something pretentiously titled “Therapeutic Horticulture”. She’s wearing shorts, even though Shelby had told them all to wear long trousers over breakfast, because it’s only ten in the morning and the air’s already shimmering with heat. She feels herself sobering up at the speed of light when they arrive at this scrappy patch of land and Andrew’s wheeling over a wheelbarrow laden with nasty-looking tools. 

Turns out, David is just using them as free labourers, because their only objective for today is to clear the overgrown bracken and till the dirt for a vegetable patch, under the guise of gardening therapy. Toni puts in about twenty minutes of work and the temperature creeps up to the high seventies before she chucks her rake down, sweat pouring off her in rivulets. Citing a water break, she collapses onto the ground; it’s searingly hot against the bare skin of her legs.

Leah and Rachel seem to be buying into the whole stress-relief thing; they’re hacking away at the plants like they’ve got a vendetta, driving the tools into the dry earth like they’re pouring suppressed rage into it. Dot sits next to her, glugging on her canteen. She’s bright red.

‘This is fucked. I thought this was meant to be a retreat.’ She grumbles, pushing back the strands of hair that are sticking to her forehead.

‘At least you’re getting paid.’ Toni retorts, absent-mindedly tearing out chunks of the dry grass. 

‘Still. I could’ve been making a killing selling half bars of Vicodin to juniors. Fucking blows, dude.’

Toni’s piecing it together, Dot’s story; she’s working out that they probably have more in common than she’d thought. It’s a sour realisation, knowing that they’ve both got caught up in things that they’re both probably out of their depth in, though with Toni, it’s only a few scores sold here and there, while Dot’s operation seems to be on a much larger scale.

‘Workin’ hard or hardly working, huh?’ Shelby’s joined them in the shade; she’s got a smear of dirt on her forehead, and she’s hovering expectantly in a way that reminds Toni of her ninth grade substitute teacher, who had been exactly the same vein of annoyingly earnest. Sans homophobia (maybe). Dot takes the prompt and sighs, stands up, joins Rachel where she’s viciously pulling weeds; Toni refuses to take the hint and they sit together for a while, both steadfastly staying silent. Shelby loses patience first, and Toni smiles inwardly with petty satisfaction.

‘Toni?

‘What do you want?’

‘Can you help Martha clear those brambles?’

Of course she doesn’t want to, but she gets the feeling that Shelby’s only going to irritate her further, so she huffs and gets up, just to get away from her.

Shelby shouts something at her as she walks away; she’s not bothered to listen so she keeps wading through the long grass towards Martha, and suddenly she’s yelping and hopping and toppling out of the grass because there’s this stinging and biting all over her ankles, in her socks, somehow even in her shoes. 

‘Told y’all to stay out of the grass- on account of the stickers.’ 

The burrs are so spiky and horrible that Toni can’t pull them out, can’t get a good grip on them, and there’s millions of them caught in her socks and poking into her, and they fucking hurt. She’s rolling about in the dirt, trying to get them off her, and then a shadow’s cast over her, and she could have screamed from how idiotic the whole situation was.

‘Ouch. Yeah, you’ll need tweezers to get them out,’ Shelby says, offering a hand to her that Toni doesn’t take.

She makes her walk to the farmhouse, Toni hobbling a few paces behind her, hissing in pain as every step seems to drive the stickers deeper.

‘And I did tell y’all to wear long trousers today,’ Shelby’s saying, and she’s got such an irritating hidden smugness in her voice that Toni forgets her promise to herself that she’ll be civil, and lashes out at the first thing she thinks of. 

‘I’m so fucking tired of looking at your ponytail. I feel like it thinks it’s better than me.’ 

Shelby doesn’t react, just impassively watches Toni crawl up the stairs of the farmhouse patio. 

The front door’s already unlocked; the smell of baking floats out the kitchen, and Shelby’s kicking off her shoes. Her socks are pink, with “ _ let’s taco bout Jesus _ !” written on them in glittery font, and Toni groans out loud.

‘Spencer? Is that you?’ A voice calls out from the kitchen.

‘Just me, mom!’ Shelby’s already climbing the stairs. 

Dot had been so cryptic when she’d mentioned Shelby’s mom; Toni tries to catch a glimpse through the doorway as she limps up the stairs, and there’s a flash of blonde hair and blue plaid, and then she can’t see anything anymore. 

Shelby’s room is nightmarish, as expected; all soft pastels and crushed velvet upholstery, and the bookshelf is more a trophy case, with only a couple of books squished in the corner. Toni flops onto the desk chair, relieved to take the weight off her feet, while Shelby rummages around in her en-suite - because of course she has an en-suite - for tweezers. 

Wincing as the burrs tug on her, she kicks off her sneakers and peels away her socks. In some places, they’ve properly punctured her skin, tiny rubies of blood forming around the spikes.

Shelby hands her the tweezers and Toni’s trying not to audibly whimper each time she yanks out a burr.

‘You a fucking equestrian or something?’ Toni says, trying to distract from the fact that she’s literally about to die from the pain of the stickers. There are more badges, banners, sashes, trophies, than she can count.

‘Oh, I do pageants.’ Shelby says, and Toni snorts.

‘Of course you do.’

‘Yeah, Toni, that’s right. I do.’ 

‘What’s your talent? Baton twirling?’

‘I sing.’ Shelby says stiffly.

‘Hmm.’ 

Faint humming floats up from downstairs.

‘Okay. I’m just goin’ to- um,’ Shelby sighs, and she can’t seem to think of an excuse fast enough. ‘I’m just goin’. Call me when you’re done.’

She leaves Toni just as she’s digging out the last few burrs; Toni decides she’s going to snoop a little, just because she can. Shelby’s got a corkboard and it’s filled with pictures - Toni recognises Andrew and Spencer amongst the masses of identical white people - and a world map. Shelby’s put pins in a few places, and Toni laughs when she realises that most of the countries marked are mission trip destinations; there’s Haiti, Tanzania, Guatemala, Uganda. She examines the bookshelf further; the trophies are all engraved with ridiculous pageant titles, and Toni notices something inconspicuously pressed between two books. She pulls it out; it’s a slim black picture frame, and inside there’s a photo of Shelby and some random brunette girl, both smiling widely as they pose for the camera, and it looks like they’re at a bowling alley or something.

‘What are you doin’?’

Toni jumps; she hadn’t noticed Shelby standing in the doorway.

‘Sorry, I, uh- it’s a cute pic.’ She says lamely.

Shelby looks down at what Toni’s guiltily holding and her face goes completely unreadable as she crosses the room, as she grabs it from Toni’s hands. 

‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’ 

Shelby suddenly looks desperately, unfathomably, sad, just for a second, before she smooths out her expression and slides the frame back onto its place, invisible between a copy of  _ The Book of Psalms  _ and  _ Death of a Salesman. _

‘It’s fine.’ Shelby says, and she’s smiling now, and just like that, the moment’s brushed over. ‘Let’s get back to the others before they think we’re slackin’.’

Toni follows Shelby back downstairs, and she stumbles into her when Shelby stops abruptly on the stairs.

‘Hi, Daddy.’

‘Shelby.’ David’s just come through the door, and he’s kicking dust off his boots as he notices Toni. ‘Ah, it’s you- what was your name again?

‘Toni.’ She says, guardedly.

David looks at her, then at Shelby, then up the stairs, as if he’s suspicious of something.

‘Shelbs, you know nobody on the programme’s allowed in the main house.’

‘Sorry, daddy, it’s just that Toni walked into the stickers and needed tweezin’.’ Shelby says, accent suddenly stronger, and David’s face relaxes.

‘Ah. Those little gems. The less beautiful of God’s creation.’ He smiles, and Shelby laughs like it’s hilarious. ‘Where’s your mom?’

‘Makin’ cinnamon rolls in the kitchen.’

‘Perfect. Jo Beth!’ David calls out, pulling a handful of envelopes out of his pocket.

The woman that Toni had caught a glimpse of earlier emerges through the doorway. She’s wearing an apron over a plaid shirt with the arms rolled up, brushing flour off her hands.

‘Can you post these for me later?’ David says.

Shelby’s mom looks so similar to Shelby it’s almost disconcerting, but she’s paler, thinner in her stature. She doesn’t look at Toni, or Shelby, just at the ground, as she reaches for the envelopes. There’s a pause when she grabs the letters and David doesn’t immediately let go, fixes her with this gaze, and Toni’s struck by how small, how insignificant she looks next to her husband.

‘Jo Beth, darlin’, we’ve got company.’ He says quietly.

Jo Beth finally looks up and smiles weakly at Toni; her eyes are wide, bluer than Shelby’s, but there’s this vacancy in them, this lifelessness. 

‘Nice to meet you.’ She says, and her voice is soft and detached, and Toni nods and Jo Beth’s not really looking at her, but somewhere over Toni’s shoulder.

David lets her take the letters and he looks so saturated, so present, so real, while she looks almost wraith-like, a moon that’s cowering away from the sun. 

‘Still don’t trust emails, Daddy?’

‘You know me, Shelbs. Old school.’ He winks, then he hangs up his hat and follows his wife into the kitchen. 

Shelby and Toni walk back to the others, and Toni can keep up with her now that she’s burr-free, so they’re walking side by side in silence. Toni feels the tug to say something; it goes against her promise to be as indifferent as possible to Shelby, but it’s honestly weirded her out, that whole uncomfortable interaction.

‘Your mom’s nice.’

‘Yeah. She’s real nice.’ Shelby answers, and there’s this almost unnoticeable tinge of bitterness to it.

  
  



	6. sunday best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: Gretchen

From there, Friday and Saturday pass without note; they finish clearing the bracken, and then Toni finally learns the rules to volleyball and they all suck, except for Rachel, and then it’s Sunday, and she’s rudely awoken as Shelby bangs on all their doors. Or rather, Shelby bangs on everyone else's doors; she knocks meekly on Toni’s, like she’s hoping Toni will sleep through it and not answer. Toni yanks the door open anyway.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

Shelby’s out of her cowboy hat and boots for once, instead coiffed into her Sunday best, and Toni visibly rolls her eyes.

‘We’re leavin’ for church in 30. Daddy said I should ask if anyone else would like to come.’ She says it reluctantly; both of them definitely know that with asking Toni, she’s barking up the completely wrong tree.

‘Seriously? I don’t get involved with that brainwashing bullshit- no doubt you think I’d burst into flames as soon as I step over the threshold.’ She says, bitter because they’ve each been doing such a good job of ignoring their _political differences_ , and yet here Shelby is, rubbing her Christianity in Toni’s face at 7am.

‘I just had to ask, okay, Toni?’ Shelby sighs, and she’s seemingly going to ignore the gay jibe, as expected, but as Toni closes the door she hears her finish under her breath. ‘Not that your brain couldn’t use a good scrub.’

‘What? Fuck you.’ Toni yanks open the door again. ‘You need to get over your problem with me, Shelby. It’s so fucking boring.’

Shelby blushes at that, defiantly holding Toni’s eye contact as she scowls at her. 

‘I don’t have a problem with _you,_ Toni. I just-’

‘Yeah, yeah. Hate the sin, not the sinner, all that shit.’ Toni’s losing fast any scraps of goodwill or sympathy she’s had for Shelby after that weird moment in the farmhouse on Friday; it’s outweighed by the vexation she feels towards all this close-minded, dogmatic pathetic-ness. It’s unbearable, and she’s looking at her with that false earnestness that’s absolutely infuriating, and now she’s fighting not to properly lose her temper with Shelby.

‘Toni, I-’

‘Morning guys. What's going on?’ Martha opens her door, half-asleep.

‘I was just invitin’ y’all to come to church with us today.’

Martha looks from Shelby to Toni, and she sees the expression on Toni’s face and understands the situation immediately because she’s Martha and she _knows_ Toni like nobody else bothers to.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I think I’ll pass on that, Shelby. Thanks anyway.’

Shelby smiles and hurries away, leaving them standing in Toni’s doorway, and Toni exhales, rolls out some of the tension that had been gathering in her shoulders. 

‘You good, Toni?’

‘Yeah. Just, Shelby, y’know. We really don’t get along.’ Toni says.

‘I know, Toni. She’s… disappointing.’ Martha says, slowly, sadly. ‘I thought she was so cool when we met her. I didn’t realise she’d actually have those opinions. It’s so messed up.’ 

Toni’s surprised when Martha actually admits that there’s a flaw in Shelby’s squeaky-clean polish. Martha’s so caught up with the rose-tinted lens she views the world through, that this admission is highly unusual. 

‘Exactly.’ She says, and she doesn’t deepen the conversation, sensing that Martha’s not in the headspace to be probed. ‘Thanks for staying, Marty.’

‘Of course.’ Martha says, and she grabs her hand as they walk downstairs, and she pokes Toni painfully in the ribs just to be annoying, and Toni loves her because Martha just gets it, gets _her_ , always and forever.

O O O 

Martha makes them eat breakfast out by the firepit, and they sit next to Dot, who’s tiredly spooning cereal into her mouth.

‘Where is everyone?’ Toni asks, and Dot answers with impressively specific intel.

‘Let’s see: Rachel’s on a 5k jog, Nora’s gone birdwatching with Quinn by the creek, Leah’s showering, you two are in front of me, I’m in hell, and Fatin’s over there.’ She points with her spoon. ‘You know she’s already bought an ounce off me? And she didn’t bat an eye when I charged east coast prices!’

Fatin’s leaning on Shelby’s pickup; she’s dressed oddly modestly, at least from what Toni’s seen of her wardrobe so far, and she’s chewing on a grass strand like a cartoon farmer. She sees them staring and waves her fingers at them lazily, regally. 

‘What’s she doing?’

‘She said yes when Shelby was recruiting for mass today.’ Dot shrugs. ‘Go figure.’

‘Wow.’ 

Leah joins them by the firepit, hair damp from the shower. 

‘All of them went, right? How long will they be away?’

‘I think Shelby said we had to entertain ourselves for like three hours.’

‘Hm.’ Leah chews on her bottom lip, and she’s got this intensity that’s been simmering since Toni met her that’s sort of unsettling. ‘We should get back the shit David confiscated.’

‘Fuck, I’m down. Let’s do it.’ Dot says. ‘I spent good money on those cigs.’

‘He’ll probably keep it in the farmhouse, right?’ Leah’s eyes are impossibly blue, searing with energy, and she’s bouncing her knee as she speaks. ‘Let’s go get them. Martha? Toni?’

Martha looks uncomfortable at the idea of the rule-breaking, so Toni lets herself get dragged in, instead.

‘Yeah, fine. Let’s just do it quickly.’

They clear away their breakfast plates and walk to the farmhouse. The day’s already heating up, and Toni’s unhappy to report that had it not been for the stupid cowboy hat she’s been wearing, she definitely would have burnt across her cheekbones and nose; the Texas sun is unforgiving like nothing she’s ever seen.

‘Door’s unlocked.’

‘Okay, Toni, you stay here, in case there’s like a stray farmhand or something.’ Leah says, and she’s practically vibrating from energy. ‘We’ll be right back.’

Dot shrugs at Toni as she follows Leah inside, and then it’s just Toni sitting on the porch. She sits down on a wicker chair, the sort you might find in a Jordan Peele movie, and a dog pads out the ajar door and sits beside her. It’s a golden retriever, naturally, and she leans down to read its collar; whoever got the collar made also included a surname, so the dog’s full Christian name is Alonzo Goodkind, and while she waits, Toni ponders on what sort of people you must be to consider a dog a part of the family but consider gay people subhuman. That must say… something about them. Regan would probably be able to articulate it.

‘Alonzo.’ She says, just to pass the time as Dot and Leah rummage inside. ‘Bark if you’re not racist.’ 

Alonzo is silent, just quietly panting.

‘That’s what I thought. Okay, now bark if you’re not homophobic.’

Alonzo yawns, and Toni sighs and reaches down to scratch behind his ears. Dot and Leah are taking a fucking age.

The sun rises higher before she eventually hears Dot and Leah clattering down the stairs, and when they emerge, Leah’s shivering, holding that book she’s been so anxious to lose on the first day, and Dot’s cargo shorts are bulging, presumably from the cigarette cartons.’

‘Victorious?’

‘Yes. Very.’ Leah says, and she’s already walking away, opening her book with practised fluidity.

‘Yeah. Couldn’t find our phones, but I got my shit, and Fatin’s too. I don’t think he’ll notice until the last day, but then what’s he gonna do? We’ll be leaving anyway.’ Dot says, and she looks a little taunt, a little unsettled, as they walk back towards their lodgings.

They decide, fuck it, it’s Sunday, so Toni rolls a joint and they laze about in the shade, tucked into the hammock together, which is a little odd because they’ve only met recently, but it’s sort of nice anyway. Dot still looks like something’s bothering her, even through the high, so Toni decides to be proactive and ask, for once.

‘You good, Dot?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know. I feel like I accidentally found some shit that was way too personal for me to see.’ She says, and the hammock they’re top-and-tailing in sways gently in the light breeze. ‘Dude, I wish I hadn’t seen it.’

Toni, with superhuman effort, cranes her neck enough to make eye contact with Dot.

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know, dude. Some weird fucking stuff in David’s office. Like, uncomfortably personal, about- ah, I don’t think I should say.’

And Toni’s too stoned to push it further, so she lets her mind drift, and then they eventually flop out into the hammock and drag Martha in from where she’s reading in the sun, and force her to make pancakes with them, and they have to top them with lemon juice and sweetener because there’s not a single molecule of actual sugar in the entire kitchen, for some reason. 

O O O

And then Toni’s walking back out to the enclave because Gretchen insists on holding her Offbeat Wellness Checks in the great outdoors, and today Gretchen’s pantsuit is charcoal grey.

‘Hi, Toni. It’s nice to meet you properly for the first time.’

Toni mumbles something back and Gretchen pulls out her clipboard, takes her pen cap off with her teeth, eager like a newly-minted journalist.

‘Okay, so, I’d like you to know that this is just a casual chat.’ She says. ‘So. How are you doing today, Toni?’

This whole thing feels like a bastardization of all the terrible sessions she’s had with social workers when they ceaselessly attempted to solve the Rubik’s cube of her childhood, and it really doesn’t put her in the mood to open up. She shrugs, non-committal.

‘Fine, I guess.’

‘Brilliant. How are you enjoying the programme so far, Toni?’

There: using her name frequently, using positive suggestive language; Gretchen’s really trying to play an angle out of the information she gets from Toni.

‘I don’t know.’ She reckons she’ll be able to get out of this quickest if she doesn’t say anything at all. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Toni. Please don’t make this like trying to draw blood from stone.’ She says, and a notch of frustration appears between her brows. ‘I promise whatever you tell me won’t go anywhere- I just want to check on your wellbeing, maybe get some feedback on the programme so far.’

‘Well, we all now know how to load a shotgun. Uh, I found out that yoga’s harder than it looks. I whittled.’ She says, and she crosses her arms defiantly.

Gretchen regards her for a moment.

‘I know you must feel like this retreat is below you.’ she says coolly, smoothly. ‘I mean- what’s yoga and southern pleasantries going to do to fix years of neglect? Of rage?’ 

Toni’s fucking caught off-guard by that, feels blood rushing to her cheeks as Gretchen continues, and she’s tapping the pen against her top lip, infuriatingly nonchalant.

‘Yes. Athletic, talented, a basketball star, but lost your ticket out because you couldn’t control yourself. Caught up in crime, in the system; a true victim of circumstance. So this retreat must all feel just so...small. Is that right?’

Toni rises to the bait, because she can’t _not,_ because Gretchen somehow _knows_ her, knows exactly where her weak spots are, and suddenly she’s thinking about that basketball game, about the cracks in the ceiling of her childhood bedroom, about the heroin wrapped tight in clingfilm, about the fear, the loneliness, and the rage, always, always the rage.

‘Why are you asking me this?’ She says, her voice coming out strangled as she tries to keep it under control.

Gretchen raises an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly, then writes something down on her clipboard.

‘Just… exploring, Toni. I really am invested in your wellbeing.’

‘I -’ She splutters, before she catches herself, barely, digging her fingernails into her palm behind her back. ‘I don’t think you are.’

‘Is that so? Can you tell me why?’

‘I know about David. About how this whole thing is his vanity project.’

Gretchen’s eye twitches slightly at that; she shifts before she answers, and Toni rejoices because this seems to be a foothold, something she can use to wrestle back some control.

‘Mm. You girls are smart; I thought you’d be able to put that together. No, I know. That’s just unfortunate; he funds it and gets his political clout, I design it and I get the chance to maybe, truly, help some girls escape the perpetual churn of their lives.’ 

‘Fucking doesn’t feel like it.’ 

‘I’m not lying to you, Toni. I honestly want you to come out of this positively. I just- I had to sacrifice watertight ethics and use David to get this programme off the ground. You feel like he doesn’t like you, especially?’

‘All of them. Him, Shelby, the whole bunch.’

‘Why’s that?’ Gretchen’s firing the questions at her, one after the other, barely giving her a second to think between them, like she’s being interrogated. And the worst thing is that she can see it happening, can see herself being manipulated, but she’s already so thrown off that she can’t get back on top of the conversation.

‘Because I’m gay, I guess.’ She says begrudgingly. 

‘So you’ve clashed with Shelby over...what? Your sexuality?’

‘Yeah. Skeeves her out.’

‘And when you’ve experienced homophobia in the past- did you react how you are now?’

That’s a low blow; Toni remembers in excruciating detail the way that girl from the away team had whispered ‘fucking dyke’ to her through that whole fateful fucking basketball match, how the fury had burned hotter and hotter with every snide smirk, how it had reached a flashpoint, boiled over, and Toni had ruined her entire life within minutes. 

‘No.’ She says, stomach churning as she relives the memory. ‘With Shelby, I’m just- I don’t know. I’m trying to be good. I’m trying to tolerate her.’

‘Interesting.’ Gretchen says, writing something on her clipboard. ‘Why the change?’

‘Not because of your fucking programme,’ Toni bites, ‘I just… I can’t let myself- I have to hold it together. Not for me- for Martha.’

Gretchen’s eyes glint and she leans forwards.

‘For Martha? Why?’

‘Because if I keep losing control, if I keep fucking things up. I think-’ Toni says, and she swallows thickly, and suddenly she can’t speak any louder than a whisper. ‘I’m worried she’ll-’

‘Yes, Toni?’

‘I’m scared she’ll finally realise that I’m not worth the effort.’ She says, and the confession fills her with this hollowness, this deep emptiness, echoing through her bones.

Gretchen exhales, leans back, writes something down with a flourish, stands up to leave.

‘I’ll see you soon, Toni.’

And then she’s alone on the bench.

  
  



	7. crushed eggshells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter fo today.

Fatin flicks on the radio as they pull down the driveway. It’s some classic rock station, and Shelby recognises Fleetwood Mac. She can’t seem to sit comfortably in the driver’s seat; Fatin sits to her right, cool and relaxed in the way she props up a knee on the dashboard and leans against the window, but Shelby feels awkward, like whatever position she sits in will be embarrassing. 

The windows are cracked, and hot air blasts them as they start to pick up speed. In the rearview mirror, Shelby can see Dot, Martha, and Toni sitting around the firepit. 

‘How about them, huh? What a pair,’ Fatin says, putting on her sunglasses. 

‘Who?’ Shelby says, surprised that Fatin’s initiating conversation. 

‘Martha and Toni. It’s like they each know what the other’s gonna say before they actually say it. Wish I had a bond like that.’

It’s shaping up to be a really freaking hot day. 

‘You know anyone like that, Shelby?’ Fatin continues, and it’s casual, conversational, and now they’re peeling down the highway, and Fatin does up her window because their hair is starting to whip around in the wind.

And Shelby feels sad, suddenly. She doesn’t _know_ anyone. Not really _._ Not enough to know what they’re thinking. Not anymore. 

And she gets this pang of loneliness, this radiating ache, even as Fatin turns up the radio and starts humming along beside her, and she realises she’s still not answered her question.

‘Andrew.’ She says plainly, and Fatin looks at her over the top of her sunglasses like she knows she’s lying.

O O O

They park in front of the church; it’s a relatively small, intimate one, only serving the surrounding counties that are populated by the small town and ranchers like Shelby’s family. It’s pretty modest on the outside; walls of white slats, grey tiling, and atop the spire, the cross is plain and unassuming. Shelby’s been here every single Sunday she can remember. Her family’s waiting for her as she steps out, and they look as equally surprised as Shelby feels when Fatin joins them where they mill on the church steps.

‘Ah, Ms Jadmani.’ David smiles, ‘We weren’t expecting you to see you.’

She hadn't expected any of the girls to opt to come with her today, perhaps least of all, Fatin. Shelby is honestly a little wary of her; since she’d blown up at her that first night. Fatin moves so fast, thinks so fast, seems to be able to infer things at the speed of light, and then has a witty jab to deliver with incredible precision, and it’s enough that Shelby feels like she’s treading on eggshells around her.

‘Yeah, well, I thought I’d see what all the fuss is about.’ Fatin says, eyes still hidden by her sunglasses, and Shelby can’t tell if she’s joking or being ironic or whatever.

Fatin had opted to come to church with her today, though she really didn’t seem like the sort to be into- how had she worded it? ‘ _The whole God thing’_ ? (And Shelby had bristled at the reduction of the intricacies of her faith to a _thing_.)

They sit at their usual pew, right upfront in full view of the rest of the congregation, and her mom’s on her left and Fatin’s on her right, and the Pastor John’s shuffling his flashcards and clearing his throat as he gets ready to start. 

‘Hey. Would you mind takin’ off your sunglasses?’ Shelby whispers to Fatin, polite as anything, and Fatin actually doesn’t argue, just slides them into her pocket, and there are deep, dark circles under her eyes, barely concealed by makeup.

Today, the sermon is about second chances, supported scripture references of Mark, his story of failure and redemption, and Shelby’s heard this one before, and it’s one of her less favourite. All that changes is the life anecdotes that Pastor John inserts.

The light spills through the stained glass window they’re under, and the sun is pleasantly warming. Shelby’s examined this particular glass window a thousand times, knows exactly how many panes of each colour there are, and it’s her favourite of all the windows in the church. It depicts Adam and Eve, just before their descent from Eden; the apple tree and the serpent are also pictured, but Adam and Eve have yet to give in to the temptation; instead, they are hand in hand. 

The congregation mumbles amen at the appropriate time, and then they stand to sing a hymn, and Shelby never feels self-conscious but today she flushes a little as Fatin stands beside her, doesn't sing, just curiously watches. They sit and Shelby’s mom is staring off into space and Shelby watches out the corner of her eye as Fatin drinks it all in, actually listening to the pastor and looking at the painted figurines and running her fingertips along the smooth wood of their pew.

Once, when she was seven, Shelby had stuck her piece of used gum under the pew, and the guilt had gnawed at her so deeply that she’d snapped and cried to her mom about it and she had driven Shelby here at 11pm on a Wednesday night and woken up Pastor John and Shelby had apologised through tears and scraped off her hardened chewing gum with a ruler. And then her mom had taken her out for ice cream, even though it was late on a school night, even though the sugar would rot her teeth.

O O O

The sermon finishes and they stand around on the steps outside, blinking as their eyes adjust to the brightness, and they’re waiting to talk to Pastor John as he does his rounds of the congregation. Fatin’s standing quietly, slightly apart from them, looking at the statue of the Virgin Mary that sits in a small enclave by the church door. 

‘So what’d you think?’ Shelby says. ‘Of the sermon?’

Fatin’s got her sunglasses back on, so Shelby can’t quite gauge her expression when she says, ‘Yeah. It was good. I’m glad I came.’

Then, her bottom lip trembles; she sniffles and turns her face away.

‘Fatin, are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I guess it was more...I don’t know. It made me miss my little brothers so fucking much.’ Fatin says, and for once, there’s no trace of humour or sarcasm, no double meanings, and Shelby’s surprised at the honesty.

‘I didn’t know you’re religious.’

‘Fuck, I’m not. I haven’t been to church or mosque in so long. I just- I don’t know. I’d forgotten how scary it is. You ever get that?’

‘Scared? Of goin’ to church? No way.’ Shelby says, and it’s almost completely true.

‘No, like, of the introspection. What he was saying about second chances, and reflecting on your actions and all that shit. About taking a look at yourself.’ Fatin says and then she raises an eyebrow and the walls are up and she’s joking again. ‘I guess I haven’t _examined myself_ in a while.’

Shelby doesn’t laugh at the crude joke, and they rejoin the rest of Shelby’s family and she looks at the ground when Pastor John finally makes it around to them; he brushes over her, notices Fatin, and gives her an enthusiastic handshake; 

‘You’re a new face.’ 

‘Fatin. Jadmani.’

‘Well, nice to meet you! Now, my official title is Deacon Gilroy, but to most folk, I’m Pastor John.’ He smiles. ‘Will you be joinin’ the congregation?’

‘No, no, I’m just here for the summer,’ Fatin’s saying, and Shelby tunes out, and the ache settles in her stomach again.

O O O 

They’re in the pickup on the way back and now they’re tuned in to some dusty talk show. 

‘Thanks for taking me, Shelby.’

‘No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.’

‘Pastor John seems like a nice guy. Friendly. I love it when people of authority give themselves a cute nickname, so you forget they're like, intimidating, powerful, whatever.’

‘Yeah, he’s real lovely.’

'He didn't seem that interested in talking to you.'

'I'm sure he was just busy.'

Shelby can feel Fatin doing it again; she can feel her mind working, feel her judging, and she grits her teeth in preparation for whatever Fatin’s going to come at her with next.

‘Okay, sorry if this is out of the blue, but you have to get over this dumb homophobia thing. It’s just not fair.’

Shelby grips the steering wheel tight.

‘What? I-’

‘Shelby. I’m serious. It’s the 21st century. It’s not fair for Toni to have to deal with whatever backwards shit you’ve got going on. She's trying to be civil with you, but come on.’

She feels frozen, trapped, as her stomach twists and she feels familiar panic start creeping up her throat.

‘You don’t have to like her. I just think you should...I don’t know.’ Fatin waves her hands, like she’s asking Shelby to do something simple as doing laundry. ‘Take the cross out of your ass when you’re around her.’

‘Did you just come to make fun of my religion?’ She blurts out and she feels cornered in the way Fatin looks at her over her sunglasses. Over the radio, an advert for Texas Tires and Maintenance plays.

‘Shit, Shelby,’ Fatin laughs. ‘I hate getting involved in people’s problems. But I seriously think you need to hear that your opinions are just straight-up wrong. It’s uncomfortable for everyone.’

‘That’s not fair.’ She can’t say anything else, can’t look anywhere but the road in front of her; her knuckles are turning white, and her smile is stretched so widely it hurts. 

Fatin sighs.

‘Okay, I tried. Can’t solve everything.’ She mumbles, and then they’re silent, and the pickup shudders as it passes over a smear of roadkill, run over so many times it’s unrecognisable. ‘Hey. Pull into there.’

Shelby doesn’t even register where she’s pulling into, and then she’s parked, and Fatin’s getting out and going into the gas station, and she’s clasping the cross of her necklace in her fist, and the talk show host’s moving onto a cleaning segment, and it’s about using crushed eggshells to get stains out of fabric. The ache is back again; it thumps against her chest like a drum, like a heartbeat, and Shelby’s closing her eyes and whispering to her Lord.

Fatin comes back and she’s laden with brown paper bags. Shelby swallows.

‘Is that alcohol?’

‘Mmhm. I think we all need to loosen up a bit.’

The bright voice on the radio speaks incessantly. _Have you ever had one of those tough stains that commercial removers can’t budge? Calcium in crushed eggshells can remove the stain by acting as a whitening agent._

And for whatever reason, that phrase sticks with Shelby all the way home, bounces around her skull like a mantra, as they pull out of the carpark and Fatin lights a cigarette and blows the smoke through a gap in the window and all Shelby can think of is _remove the stain, remove the stain_ , over and over and over.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Toni next chapter, coming sooner than usual.


	8. brown paper bag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have a little 🤏👌 Shoni in this chapter....as a treat

Toni’s sitting alone under a tree in one of the fields, tearing out clumps of grass. She’s been walking off her session with Gretchen, that invasive bitch. It really had not been pleasant, and she’s still stewing in a bitter cocktail of embarrassment and sadness at what Gretchen had forced her to say- no, had got her to admit. Jesus. She really was a talented fucking shrink. She’d somehow tapped into that fear that’s always gnawing at the back of Toni’s mind - the one that Toni’s so good at repressing, so good at ignoring - and it had been fucking uncomfortable. And that is precisely the reason she doesn’t like addressing it; she can’t afford that, the wallowing, the self-pity. She has to just keep ticking along. 

‘Hey, Toni.’

Nora and Quinn have just appeared out of the forest, and they’ve got binoculars around their necks.

Toni brushes the dirt off her hands and sighs. Day by day. One foot in front of the other. So she pushes down the hard lump in her chest.

‘Hey.’ She greets them, standing as they approach. ‘What’re you doing there?’

‘We found this book in the kitchen earlier, so we went birdwatching.’

‘Ah. Very nice.’

‘It was a successful endeavour. We saw two European Starlings, four Northern Cardinals, six Purple martins, and one Inca Dove.’ Quinn rattles off, and Nora punches his arm.

‘No! It was two Cardinals, six Starlings, and four Martins.’

Both Nora and Quinn are such twitchy people, but as they stand side by side, Toni’s struck by how nicely their respective nervous energies complement each other; together, their awkwardness connects into a coherence.

‘Did you also see two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree?’ 

‘Nice Christmas joke, Toni. But just so you know, both of those birds are European.’ 

‘Hmm.’

‘It’s getting too dark to see; we’re heading back now. You coming?’

Perhaps it’s the way Quinn and Nora’s hands shyly brush together as they walk, or perhaps it’s the memories that Gretchen’s talk has dredged up, but Toni gets this pang of jealousy. She feels this selfish want to have that connection with someone; that shyness, that tension. It’s been so, so long since she’s looked into someone’s eyes and had that spark of excitement; the bashful smiles of promise, the feeling of someone being a beginning. 

There had been Regan, but that had devolved, degraded; broken down into harsh words and the sinking feeling of dread and then Toni was alone again.

She falls into step with Nora and Quinn, who bump shoulders every third step. The sun’s starting to set; their shadows are long, misshapen figures, splayed across the field.

Toni guesses her loneliness must be plain on her face because Nora looks at her, squinting against the low sun rays slanting across their faces.

‘Have I told you my dirty Christmas joke? You look like you need a dirty Christmas joke.’

O O O 

Everyone’s sitting around the firepit when they get back, and Martha leaps up and presses a hot dog into Toni’s hand.

‘How was Gretchen?’ she says, and she seems a little giddy, unbalanced.

‘Fine. Boring.’ Toni says unconvincingly, and amazingly, Martha buys it.

‘Thank God you’re finally back.’ Fatin shouts, ‘We came back from church bearing gifts.’

Toni looks curiously at Shelby, who looks awkward, sitting with her hands crossed in her lap. They make eye contact and Toni’s just about to look away, ready to move on, but Shelby holds her gaze and she has this strange little smile, strained and unusual, as she tightly holds her plastic cup. Bemused, Toni offers a brief one back, and she looks away before she notices the beginnings of a very faint blush creep up Shelby’s neck.

‘I made Shelby stop at that busted gas station on the way back.’ Fatin says, and she’s got her sunglasses on even though the sun is beginning to set. ‘Drinks on me! Happy one week at this shithole!’

She pours them drinks, and the thought’s almost enough to lift Toni out of her bad mood; she forces herself to relax into the atmosphere, to push down the ache.

The alcohol explains everyone’s looseness; Dot’s flushed face, Martha’s giggliness, the way Leah is sunk so deeply into her camping chair. Someone’s wired up the radio to a bigger speaker and miraculously located an old school hip-hop station, and it’s set loud enough to be more than just background noise. 

‘Yeah, I’ll cheers to that.’

‘Fuck yeah.’ Fatin says as Martha loudly exclaims ‘Raise yo glass!’

Toni downs her drink, which turns out to be almost fully vodka with just the barest suggestion of cranberry, and she grimaces at the harshness as it drags down her throat.

‘Fuck! Are you trying to kill me?’

‘Just trying to get you losers going. And maybe exterminate some of your internal microbiomes, while I’m at it.’

Fatin pours them all another one, and then just one more, and then Toni probably looks sloppy as fuck as she eats her hot dog, trying to keep the ketchup spillage at a minimum. Martha’s laughing hysterically at Nora’s story of the time she was exploring storm drains and got lost in the sewers, and Will Smith’s corniest songs are blaring over the speakers. 

‘Guy! I feel a drinking game coming on…’ Leah slurs, and she’s obviously just making it up as she goes along; the game is that they put one of the gas station brown paper bags on the floor and one at a time, they have to pick it up without their hands. It sounds completely stupid and ends up being even stupider, and Toni has to look away from Martha failing to pick up the bag with her elbows in case she actually pisses herself from laughter.

Then it’s her and she thinks it’s going to be easy as fuck, but the drunkness hits her all at once as she stands up too fast, and she has to work hard to balance herself. Yeah, she’s a lot drunker than she thought, unsteady on her feet, and when she tries to bend down to catch the elusive bag with her teeth, she misses by about a foot, keeling to the side.

‘Ha! Drink!’ Nora laughs, and Toni downs her cup again, and nobody can pick up the stupid fucking bag, and they valiantly go for another round. When they’ve all made two more increasingly messy attempts and the bag is still on the ground, they concede, slump back in their chairs.

‘Game successful, I think.’ Dot says, and now even the tips of her ears are bright red. 

‘How? We got bested by a paper bag.’ Rachel scowls.

‘Yeah, but we got even drunker. And we had fun. And the bag was especially slippery, I swear.’

Then Toni’s listening to a supremely confusing story about the oldest guy Fatin’s ever slept with, and she can’t quite concentrate because Shelby’s not engaging in the conversation, noticeably quiet, enough of a downer that it bothers Toni. She’s sitting stiffly, quietly. And fuck, Toni just can’t deal with bad vibes right now; she leans over and slurs into Dot’s ear.

‘What’s up with her?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t want to touch a floor bag? It’s not communion wine?’ Dot loudly whispers back, then she seems to think something over before she sits back and disjointedly yells, ‘C’mon! Another game! Shelby, you like games, don’t you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…’

‘Okay, totally not peer pressuring, but we’re gonna play, with or without you. And just saying, the more, the merrier.’

Fatin pours her another drink, and Shelby takes it hesitantly.

‘Don’t worry. I made it super weak for your delicate blonde countenance.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No problem. I believe in protecting America’s fair southern belles. Can’t have you going extinct on us.’

‘So, new game. Who’s got a pen?’

‘Me!’ Nora exclaims, with immense pride; she produces a handful of biros.

‘Right.’ Dot says, and she’s messily tearing the paper bag into strips. ‘Everyone take a strip and write down a body part. Then, we’ll mix them together in this hat. Oh fuck, wait, pair up as well!’

Toni gets distracted because Biggie comes on the radio and he’s her shit, and so she misses the crucial second when everyone starts pairing off, and Martha’s already wound around Nora and Fatin’s sitting in Leah’s lap; she slyly glances at Rachel, who shrugs and sits next to Dot with a nonchalant ‘Sorry, Toni, I wanna actually stand a chance at winning’, which leaves her with Shelby, because of course it fucking does. There’s a moment of awkwardness as everyone realises who’s been left to pair up, and Fatin mumbles an ‘oops, sorry, Toni’ under her breath and Shelby’s blushing furiously and fuck it, Toni’s got enough drunken goodwill to be the bigger person and just get on with it. She staggers over and gracelessly sits beside her, and Shelby shifts up on her seat like she’s putting space between them.

‘Now, everyone take a strip. You basically have to touch whatever body parts you and your partner pull. And if you become unattached, you have to take a shot.’

‘Dorothy! Where did you get this unbelievably dumb - yet scandalous! - game from?’ 

‘Um...it’s called “attached at the hip” and I think I- jeez, who cares? Take your strips and shut up.’

‘What’d you get?’

‘Rilke and I have,’ Fatin squints at her strips. ‘Tongue and finger.’

‘Dude, it better be Leah’s finger and your tongue.’ Dot chuckles. ‘We’ll have a moment of peace.’

Leah flushes red as Fatin laughs and grabs her hand, makes a big show out of dramatically sticking out her tongue and putting one of Leah’s fingers in her mouth. Dot and Rachel get foot and ear, Martha and Nora get nose and knee, and then there are two strips left in the hat.

‘What’d you get?’ 

‘Uh,’ Toni says, slightly struggling with reading the writing, which shifts in and out of focus. ‘I got “waist”.’

‘Shelby?’

‘Arm.’

‘Boo!’ Nora says, at the same time Fatin mumbles ‘Fucking vanilla!’. (Leah's finger is still in her mouth; her words come out mangled.)

‘Which one of you bores wrote down “arm”?’

‘I did!’ Shelby protests, and she avoids looking at Toni as she speaks. ‘Dottie just told us to write down a body part! I didn’t know it would be used like this.’

‘C’mon, Shelby, play fair.’

‘Put your arm around Toni’s waist or start knocking back shots!’

A flash of panic passes across Shelby’s face before she bites her lip and loosely wraps her arm around Toni’s waist, and if Toni wasn’t so drunk she’d be sort of offended by the whole thing, but she’s foggy enough that she shifts closer so Shelby can hook her thumb into one of her belt loops. It feels childishly awkward, the way Shelby can’t look at her even as they sit close, faces warmed by the fire.

‘Alright. If you separate from your partner, take a shot.’ Dot points towards the unnerving array of mugs they’re using in place of shot glasses. ‘Starting...now! Until we get too drunk or bored to keep going.’

Rachel has maneuvered herself, sat sideways in her chair, kicked off one of her shoes so she can rest one of her socked feet on Dot’s ear; Dot looks wholly unbothered, laughing at Fatin, who’s telling a dynamic story, words semi-incomprehensible from Leah’s finger in her mouth. 

And Toni sort of forgets herself; she keeps getting too caught up in the conversation and forgets who’s next to her, and has to keep fighting the instinct (definitely magnified by Fatin’s unique take on Vodka Cranberries) to lean into Shelby. It’s hard, irritatingly; as the night descends it’s getting cold, even with the heat of the fire, and Toni keeps catching herself starting to slouch into Shelby, then having to straighten away. How ironic. 

It’s certainly not the best drinking game Toni’s ever played; everyone else is getting drunker and drunker (Martha cannot seem to keep her knee in contact with Nora’s nose for the life of her), while Toni just has to sit with Shelby wrapping her arm around her waist with perfectly measured pressure. Technically, they’re winning. 

She sighs. ‘Okay, well, this isn’t the most fun I’ve ever had.’ 

She locates an open bottle of wine from the floor around her and pours herself a glass, reasoning that if she’s not going to get tequila-wasted, she might as well get classily wine-wasted.

‘You want a refill?’ She says with a clipped politeness she didn’t know she had.

Shelby nods. ‘Thanks.’

She tops up Shelby’s cup and necks her own, and then it’s the Pharcyde over the radio and Toni wonders which radio host is optimistically repping the 90’s rap classics in deep, empty, rural, Texas. She refills her own cup.

(Opposite her, Leah sneezes, covering it with her hands by reflex, and Fatin eyes her hands with distaste, proclaiming, ‘Okay, those sneezy fingers are not going near my mouth. Oh! A shot, methinks?’)

Then, the cheap wine starts to wash away Toni’s filter, and she’s talking without thinking, and Shelby's still just sitting stiffly, silently, like she's afraid of her.

‘No need to look so uncomfortable, Shelby.’ She mumbles, words spilling out of her before she can stop them. ‘I’m not going to fucking bite.’

Shelby finally turns to look at her and her cheeks are pink from the wine and Toni’s so drunk that she can’t stop herself tracking the movement of her throat as Shelby swallows, and her eyes are glassy, unfocused as they flicker in the firelight.

‘I’m not.’ Shelby slurs.

‘You’re not what?’

‘I’m not uncomfortable.’ Shelby says, southern drawl made intense from the wine. ‘Around you.’

‘Yeah, okay.’ Toni mumbles back, a little unsure of what’s going on, because Shelby’s speaking with an earnesty, a desperation, she’s not heard before. 

‘Please believe me.’ Shelby says, and as if to punctuate, as if to prove it, she digs her fingers into Toni’s waist. ‘You don’t- I- my religion-’

‘I don’t want to hear this right now, Shelby.’ Toni says - even though she started the conversation - and she’s caught up in the way Shelby’s gripping her waist and how she’s so tired of all these identity politics and how she already knows she’s going to have a killer headache in the morning.

Shelby nods and swallows; again, Toni can’t _not_ stare at the way her throat bobs, and this time Shelby definitely notices, pink cheeks deepening to red, and she looks so gorgeous all of a sudden that Toni has to look away, blush rising on her own cheeks, blaming her own pathetic, easily-swayed, drunken mind. Toni catches Dot eyeing them oddly.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, I- Shit, careful!’

Martha’s night is over when she tries to get up to dance and nearly falls straight into the fire; she bids them goodnight and gives Toni a sloppy kiss on the forehead and staggers inside, soon followed by Nora, Rachel, Dot, and Shelby, and Toni’s annoyed by how noticeably colder she is without Shelby wrapped around her. 

Then, it’s just her, Fatin, and Leah, and Fatin rolls a joint and they huddle closer around the fire, chatting absolute shit about nothing at all. Toni’s crossed as fuck when Fatin deads the zoot and chucks it into the fire; by now, it’s burnt down to a pile of glowing embers.

‘Okay, I’m out.’ Fatin says, and she’s got this glint in her eye. ‘Toni?’

It takes Toni a second to realise what she means.

‘Oh. Um. Yeah.’

‘Great.’ Fatin says, and she’s already standing.

Toni looks apologetically at Leah as she takes Fatin’s outstretched hand. ‘Uh, ‘night, Leah.’

Leah seems disappointed, eyes flicking to their linked hands, then to Fatin, who’s already walking away. 

‘Yeah. ‘night, guys.’

O O O 

Fatin doesn’t waste any time; she tugs Toni into her room with speed, maybe desperation, and then they’re kissing, bodies pressed together, Fatin’s nails scratching down her back.

‘Don’t worry, Toni. Our beautiful burgeoning friendship won’t suffer.’ Fatin’s taking off her shirt and gripping Toni’s hips and pressing kisses against her neck, her jaw. ‘This means nothing.’

‘Okay.’ Toni says, and she’s touching Fatin back, dragging her fingers along her sides, leaning into the kisses, and she feels sort of lonely again. ‘Meaningless.’

Fatin pulls back, eyes blinking dark in the half-light. She licks her lips. ‘Meaningless.’

And then she’s walking them backwards towards the bed and pulling Toni on top of her.

  
  



End file.
